| The relationship between crime and psychopathy is fairly grated at least since Robert Hare designed the Psychopathy checklist and made its work available. The data presented reinforce the idea that psychopaths show a remarkable pattern of criminal versatility and therefore correctional administrations have to be very careful in selecting and classifying inmates solely on the basis of the crimes they committed. In fact importance should be assigned to their psychopathic tendencies which sometimes may be dissimulated under a less serious criminality. Therefore the author argues, based on data gathered in the Portuguese prisons and compared to other European countries, that inmates' jobs assignments or indications for correctional programs should be mediated through the use of Hare's PCL-R (Hare, 1991), so that failures and disciplinary problems could be prevented. Implications concerning the application of the European Rules for Correctional Treatment are also briefly addressed.
|
Updated 05/20/2006